Member-only story
Congressional hearings dealing with the technology industry tend to have an underrepresentation of members that are ‘with the times’ of the digital age. It’s as if certain members of Congress are the type of people that ask their grandchildren to fix their broken computer that just was unplugged in the first place. The character and rhetoric of the constituents representing the modern political landscape can be taxing on the public who may find themselves fatigued with the current news cycle. So what better than having these constituents talk in a room for 5 hours?
On Wednesday, July 29th, the CEOs of the ‘Big Four’ in the tech industry testified virtually in front of a House Judiciary Subcommittee on anti-trust as part of an ongoing investigation into their respective companies. It was a Skype call containing a combined worth of $2.3 trillion yet some still had to be reminded that they were on mute. The faces of Mount Trustmore include Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Tim Cook of Apple, and Sundar Pichai of Google. There is growing concern that the companies that these men represent are exercising monopoly power to squander competition and are directly violating anti-trust laws. But what are anti-trust laws and what is their significance? In order to provide context, we are going to have to go a little bit back in time.
